Café El Cortijo (Montreal)

1. Overview

The Café El Cortijo first appears in the sources in the fall of 1958, when an Italian-Montreal weekly announces the opening, at 2112 Clark Street, of a “new Spanish restaurant” whose walls are decorated with typical scenes and which offers its clientele European cuisine, espresso coffee and, on certain evenings, music by a Cuban orchestra.¹ The establishment fits into the fashion for themed restaurants in the metropolis, which already boasts French cabarets, tavern-style clubs and popular dance halls.

Around 1959–1960, however, the venue changes symbolic function: a long photo-essay published in the Perspectives supplement of La Presse describes El Cortijo as the café that is the “headquarters of Montreal beatniks”, a place where teenagers and young adults who identify with the Beat Generation come to dream of “a world shaped to fit human beings” while sipping coffee, playing chess and debating literature and politics.²

Several articles published in Le Petit Journal and Le Devoir over the course of 1960 confirm this role as a cultural laboratory: El Cortijo becomes the rallying point for a small community of actors, poets and chansonniers — including Janou Saint-Denis, Pascal and the chansonnier nicknamed Tex (Lecor) — who dream of opening their own “artists’” nightclub.^3,4,5

Reports from 1960 describe El Cortijo as a café with a charged atmosphere, where painted walls, collages and drawings mingle with cigarette smoke, concert posters and a youth that “refuses to resign itself.”

In later recollections, El Cortijo is often cited as a foundational venue of Montreal counter-culture: a space where francophone and anglophone bohemians intersect with European immigrants, students from Université de Montréal and McGill, and young workers attracted by poetry, jazz, emerging rock or protest song. Literary critics in the 1970s even evoke the café as one of the symbolic settings of the generation of Réjean Ducharme.⁴

2. The site — 2112 Clark Street and the Faubourg Saint-Laurent

Clark Street runs through the heart of the Faubourg Saint-Laurent, a former commercial and working-class neighbourhood west of Saint-Laurent Boulevard and north of downtown. In the mid-20th century the area is characterized by a fabric of two- or three-storey brick buildings, with shops, taverns, restaurants and cafés on the ground floor and apartments or offices above.

2112 Clark Street fits into this landscape as a narrow commercial space reached by a few steps from the sidewalk, which successively houses restaurants of various cuisines, nightclubs and performance venues. The 1958 article, which stresses the “special atmosphere” created by El Cortijo’s décor, suggests that the interior is thoroughly reconfigured to evoke an Andalusian tavern, with mural paintings, arches and knick-knacks.¹

In 1960, photographs published in Perspectives show a very different décor: a façade covered with graffiti and drawings, improvised signs, hand-lettered posters advertising evenings, dark interiors with expressionist canvases, collages, makeshift lamps and tightly packed tables, turning the former Spanish restaurant into a true beatnik coffee cellar.² The text notes that the street is run-down, but that this does not deter those who identify with the “Beat Generation.”

Three years later, a feature published in January 1963 in the magazine Le Samedi confirms this pioneering role by calling El Cortijo the “ancestor of Clark Street”, meaning the first café around which the neighbourhood’s bohemian life took shape. The author, François Piazza, describes a large room that is part Flemish gable, part glassed-in veranda, bathed in Spanish colours, where people come “for peace” and carefully avoid getting mixed up in their neighbour’s business.¹⁰

In the late 1970s, when journalist Pierre Beaulieu visits Le Pretzel enchaîné, he notes that Toméo, the venue’s new owner, has taken over “the old El Cortijo (on Clark Street)” to install a concert room with a large bar and professional stage.⁶ This testimony confirms the spatial continuity between the bohemian café of the 1950s–60s and the rock club of the late 1970s.

3. A Spanish restaurant turned beatnik hangout

At the time of its opening, El Cortijo is presented as a Spanish restaurant with carefully designed décor: an article in Il cittadino canadese describes walls hung with “characteristic” paintings and the venue’s “very special atmosphere,” serving European cuisine and espresso coffee. Europeans living in Montreal are invited to feel “at home” there, and the establishment advertises a Cuban orchestra on Fridays and Sundays, suggesting a blend of Spanish and Latin-American music.¹

Less than two years later, El Cortijo is best known as a café for young bohemians. In his 1960 report, journalist and photographer Claude Fournier describes teenagers who, while sipping coffee, claim the legacy of the Beat Generation and dream of changing the world from the café tables.² The article emphasizes the voluntary marginality of these Montreal “beatniks”: dark clothing, black humour, ostentatious rejection of bourgeois comfort, fascination with American literature and modern jazz.

One of the central characters of the place is a chansonnier nicknamed Tex. The piece in Perspectives presents him as “the chief of the beatniks”, a painter turned guitarist who animates the evenings by singing his own songs.² In the photos, he is seen sitting at a table, cigarette dangling, guitar in hand, an emblematic figure of the black-clad bohemia that frequents El Cortijo.

A second look, published three years later in Le Samedi, completes this portrait by stressing the café’s silent, contemplative dimension. The columnist describes El Cortijo as a “huge room, half Flemish, half glassed-in veranda, in Spanish colours” whose atmosphere is the complete opposite of the bustle in the other Clark Street clubs: people come here to flee the noise, play dominoes, billiards or chess — and keep quiet.¹⁰

“El Cortijo: a café where everything is silence… The only place in Montreal, as far as I know, where people play billiards in silence. Many men, few women. Most of the clients are older, that is, at least 25 years old. And there are many non-Canadians, mainly of Spanish origin.”

For this columnist, El Cortijo is thus a temple of silence in the heart of a neighbourhood in turmoil: a place where one escapes daily life, adopts the habits of a “confirmed bachelor,” and watches others without disturbing them. The clientele is described as essentially male, somewhat older than in other beatnik cafés, made up of a mix of workers, artists and European immigrants, especially Spaniards.¹⁰

The café therefore functions as a transitional space between the ethnic restaurant and the American-style coffee house: people still eat there, but coffee consumption becomes central, with a strong emphasis on intellectual discussion, chess, poetry and songs. The authorities and part of the popular press view this milieu with suspicion, even irony, but more curious columnists see in it the symptom of a youth seeking new forms of expression.

4. Poetry, song and bohemian sociability

Several sources mention the cultural activities that develop at El Cortijo, notably around actress and director Janou Saint-Denis. A profile of her published in 1978 in Le Devoir recalls that, at the turn of the 1960s, she helped set up poetry and song evenings in various Montreal cafés, and explicitly names El Cortijo among them.⁵

An article in Le Petit Journal of 31 January 1960 offers an insider’s view of the small group of bohemians who frequent the café: it portrays Janou, the chansonnier Tex, the character Pascal and a constellation of artist friends who dream of opening their own club, dubbed “La Poubelle” (“The Trash Can”) where they plan to present shows, readings and improvisations.³ The piece emphasizes the mix of precarious everyday life (odd jobs, modest rents) and lofty artistic ambitions that characterize this micro-milieu.

The feature in Le Samedi adds to this picture by showing that, despite this effervescence, sociability at El Cortijo is still marked by quiet rituals: billiards and chess games played in near-religious silence, low-voiced conversations, long solitary sessions in front of a black coffee. Far from the noisy clubs in the area, the café appears as an introspective refuge where one comes as much to think as to be seen.¹⁰

Although it is difficult to reconstruct El Cortijo’s detailed programming, the reports suggest a flexible café-concert format: evenings built around chansonniers (Tex and others), poetry readings, improvised debates on politics, religion or sexuality, in a climate that is both serious and playful. Recorded music (jazz, folk, early rock records) provides a backdrop between performances.

For a segment of Montreal youth, El Cortijo thus represents a first encounter with alternative forms of expression which, a few years later, would be extended in other cafés, folk clubs and experimental venues in the city.

5. Afterlives and transformations of 2112 Clark Street

The name El Cortijo gradually disappears from advertisements in the early 1960s, indicating that the café has changed purpose or ownership. For the following decade, columnists refer to a cabaret or “Bavarian bar” operating in the same space, though details of this period remain poorly documented.⁶

In the late 1960s, 2112 Clark(e) St. is clearly identified in the English-language press as home to Modball (or Mod-ball / Modball House), an alcohol-free teen club and coffee house presented as an “international fun and dance scene” or “international youth centre and dance hall.”^11,12 A large advertisement in the Montreal Star of 19 January 1968 announces the opening of a “free style dance-concert” with the band THE BU-BUBBLES and a psychedelic light show, noting that “no alcohol [is] served”.¹¹

A long feature on the youth page of the Montreal Star describes Modball as one of the boldest projects on the newly redeveloped Clark Street: Ozy Paulik combines old European-style architecture (half-timbered façade, large sign) with a contemporary atmosphere for teenagers — dance floor, stage for rock and rhythm-and-blues bands, non-psychedelic but “artistic” lighting, a chatting area, small art gallery and international magazine library.¹² The article stresses that the venue is intended as a place where young people can “develop their individuality” in a supervised, alcohol-free environment, yet still listen to loud music and experiment with events and happenings.

Other “Places” columns indicate that Modball hosts weekend happenings, with dancing for teenagers and adults, go-go dancers, the sale of “real grass and bananas” (a promotional gag), as well as family matinees and brunches.^12,14 The club also serves as a rallying point for Montreal folk singers, with Ozy Paulik inviting coffee-house owners to meet there to form a bilingual folk-singers’ guild and create a summer festival on Mount Royal.¹²

The press also mentions activities with a more explicit community focus: in May 1968, the Gazette reports a parent-teen “talk-in” organized at Modball House, 2112 Clark St., where parents are invited to discuss difficulties in raising teenagers with youth workers and church representatives, while a radio column in the Montreal Star describes a CJAD recording at Modball, where young people speak freely for several hours about their daily reality.¹⁵

In 1979, the address 2112 Clark Street reappears prominently in the pages of La Presse with the opening of the club Le Pretzel enchaîné. Journalist Pierre Beaulieu notes that promoter Bill Toméo, owner of La Vieille Fabrique de Spaghetti and other establishments, has acquired “the old El Cortijo” and had a room built there that can accommodate some 350 seated patrons plus around sixty standing, with a stage, modern sound system and a long bar.⁶

Le Pretzel enchaîné initially specializes in programming rock, jazz and song, hosting both local artists and international headliners, such as The Ramones and The B-52’s, before running into various management problems and changing orientation in the early 1980s.⁷ In the memory of music fans, however, the venue remains associated with a handful of memorable concerts from the late 1970s and very early 1980s.

Today, the memory of El Cortijo survives mainly through press archives, the testimonies of artists from the “Cortijo generation” and studies on the birth of Montreal counter-culture. In this narrative, the café appears as an essential link between post-war nightclubs, the first existentialist cafés and the legendary venues of the following decades.

In literary memory, the El Cortijo café also reappears in the work of playwright and novelist MICHEL TREMBLAY. In the novel La nuit des princes charmants (1995), the narrator mentions an itinerary “from the café El Cortijo to the cabaret des Quatre Coins du monde,” which helps cement the café in cultural memory as a symbolic backdrop for the nocturnal wanderings of Montréal youth in the 1950s–1960s.¹⁶

6. Chapter — Janou Saint-Denis and the Cortijo generation

6.1. An actress at the heart of Montreal bohemia

Born in Montreal in 1930, actress and theatre figure Janou Saint-Denis stands out, from the 1950s onward, for her interest in poetry, experimental theatre and the promotion of Quebec culture. A long profile devoted to her in Le Devoir in 1978 describes her as a “phenomenon of Montreal culture,” an tireless organizer of readings, workshops and literary cabarets.⁵

In this piece, journalist Angèle Dagenais reminds readers that Janou’s career is closely tied to downtown cafés and small venues: she organizes poetry evenings there, supports chansonniers and helps transform restaurants into creative spaces. Among these venues, she explicitly names Café El Cortijo as one of the first spaces where she brings together a clientele of young artists and students around spoken word and music.⁵

6.2. From the tables of El Cortijo to the “La Poubelle” project

The article by Alain Stanké published in Le Petit Journal on 31 January 1960 vividly illuminates the atmosphere of that period. Over several columns, it follows the small group of “Montreal bohemians” who regularly gather at El Cortijo: Janou, chansonnier Tex, their friend Pascal and other accomplices.³ They discuss literature, love, consumer society and, above all, the project of opening their own cabaret, which they ironically name “La Poubelle” (“The Trash Can”) because they intend to welcome everything that “official” culture discards.

The piece highlights the communal dimension of this adventure: everyone brings what they can (sets, texts, songs, technical help), and the café serves as headquarters for preparing the future club. Even though La Poubelle will take shape elsewhere, the imaginary of the place remains deeply linked to El Cortijo, portrayed as a kind of laboratory — a testing ground for intimate theatre and song.

6.3. Memory of a “myth of Montreal culture”

Later writings about Janou Saint-Denis, notably those published at the time of her passing and in studies of Quebec theatre, return to this period by highlighting her role as a go-between connecting several milieus: theatre, song, poetry and social activism.⁵ El Cortijo is then evoked as one of the places where this vocation took shape: a café with few financial resources but rich in conversations, improvisations and collective experiments.

From this perspective, the history of El Cortijo extends far beyond the few years of its commercial existence: it merges with that of a generation of artists who, on the eve of the Quiet Revolution, sought in Montreal cafés spaces where they could reinvent language, song and the forms of nocturnal sociability.